1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a rack management system for managing electronic devices, such as servers and network devices, accommodated in a number of racks, a management terminal, a configuration retaining apparatus, and a rack apparatus to be used for accommodating these servers and electronic devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a general data center that uses a large number of electronic devices, such as servers and network devices, the electronic devices are accommodated in a number of racks to carry out operation. In such an environment, racks are usually disposed remotely from the management terminal. When a server (electronic device) accommodated in a rack breaks down, the manager of electronic devices can specify the broken server with reference to the management terminal, but a maintenance operator at the site where the racks are disposed can not easily do so. Therefore, in order to specify the broken devices, the maintenance operator has to contact the manager to acquire information about the broken device or has to check electronic devices accommodated in many racks.
A general 19-inch rack for servers has been designed in accordance with the standard for electronic devices determined by ANSI/EIA (American National Standards Institute/Electronic Industries Alliance). The standard fixes the width and the height of a unit chassis for a device such as a server to be 19 inches (about 482.6 mm) and a multiple of 1.75 inches (about 44.45 mm) and determines the minimum height unit of 1.75 inches to be “1 U (unit)”. Design that conforms to these standards creates servers having various thicknesses from a thin one with 1 U height to a large one that occupies a space of several units. A 19-inch rack accommodates a number of servers different in thickness (height).
In usual practice, for a number of servers accommodated in the above racks, a management terminal is equipped in order to manage operation state of each of the servers. As mentioned above, in such an environment as a data center that handles a large number of servers, a management terminal is frequently disposed remotely from racks. In a system using the above racks, a failed server has conventionally been specified in the following steps (1) and (2).
(1) When a failure occurs in a server, information about the server is sent to the management terminal. The sent information is generally the name and/or the IP (Internet Protocol) address of the server.
(2) The management operator and the maintenance operator previously retain information that each server is accommodated in which position of which rack and information of the name (or IP address) of each server which are correlated with each other, and refer to the server name (or the IP address) that the management terminal is notified in the above step (1) to be displayed on the management terminal. Finally, on the basis of the server name and the previously retained information, the position of the server that needs repairing is specified.
(2′) Some systems retain information about the accommodation position of each server in the management terminal. In such systems, the management terminal specifies and displays the failed server in step (2) based on the notified server name (or the IP address) and the retained information concerning the accommodation position, so that the manager and the maintenance operator can confirm the position of the failed server by referring to the management terminal.
However, in the above conventional specifying manner, unless the management terminal is disposed near to a rack that accommodates the failed server, it is difficult for the maintenance operator that is to repair the failed server to grasp in which position in which rack the failed server is accommodated because the maintenance operator cannot specify the failed server simply by referring to racks. As a solution the maintenance operator has to contact the manager performing management in a remote place to obtain information about the failed server. Such a system has been problematically inconvenient.
With the foregoing problems in view, the object of the present invention is to provide a system, used in an environment which handles a large number of electronic devices (apparatuses) such as servers, that is able to rapidly specify a failed server with ease, thereby improving maintainability.
The following Patent references 1 and 2 individually disclose techniques of a rack which accommodates substrates. Specifically, Patent reference 1 discloses a technique that automatically adjusts a rack interval of a substrate accommodation magazine to fit each substrate, and discloses a memory in which substrate information is recorded and a substrate information management section for reading the substrate information from and writing the substrate information to the memory. Patent reference 2 discloses a rack which accommodates configuration elements, such as a substrate, which form a body apparatus of a PC (Personal Computer) and a remote monitoring center for monitoring states of the elements. Even if technologies of Patent references 1 and 2 are applied to a system including a large number of servers exemplified above (in this case, regarding each server as a substrate), these techniques only have to take the same measurement as that mentioned above in an event of failure occurrence in a server (substrate) and therefore the above problems cannot be solved.
Patent reference 1: Japanese Patent No. 2971984
Patent reference 2: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (KOKAI) Publication No. 2000-244156